 Hello there. So today I'm going to give a bit of a continuation. So I made a video a couple of videos ago where I talked about my situation where I'm a freelancer and my wife isn't. And so about some of the issues that can come up when basically you're a freelancer and your partner, your spouse, your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your significant other is not. And how to deal with it. And then in response, my sister made a video because she and her husband are both freelancers. And and some of the things to look out for when you have a situation where both of you are freelancers. And so yeah, check out that video if you're in the situation like that. But anyway, got me thinking about a couple more things and maybe you know, more of a preliminary approach of how to, of how to handle this. If you, once again, if you're in my situation, if you are a freelancer and your partner, your, you know, spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever are is not and works in a company. And because as I mentioned before, in theory, it should be fine. You do your thing, they do their thing and then that's it. But in reality, obviously that's not the case. And so there are quite a few issues that you have to deal with. And so I just kind of wanted to touch upon them. So let's do that now. First of all, so the first thing you should do is you should have the talk. If you're with someone, it's a serious relationship, whatever, then you should have the talk. By the talk, I don't mean a relationship talk or something, but I mean about your life. I'm doing what I'm doing. You're doing what you're doing. How is this going to play out? What would an ideal situation be? What would a likely scenario be? You know, and how is this going to work out? So maybe you're working for yourself because you want to be location independent, but your boyfriend girlfriend or whatever works for a company. So that means they have to stay there. How's that going to work out? Maybe you're working for yourself so you can spend more time with kids, but then your spouse would like to spend time with kids or not, or maybe it works out perfectly that way. Or maybe, I don't know, whatever the situation might be, at least talk about it because there are a couple things. First of all, it'll make you readdress what you want to do because let's face it. If you decide, I'd like to be a freelancer and that's it. You might not become a freelancer, but if you give yourself set goals and you give yourself a timeline and you give yourself certain constraints, you're more likely to achieve that, right? And the main constraint for most people is money. You're like, I'd like to be a freelancer, but I need to earn money. I have about, I don't know, six months of runway or something or I can do it while I'm doing my other job, something, you know, and that helps you actually build up something. And same here, if your constraint is the situation with your spouse and you need to figure something out, it forces you to kind of make a more of a concrete plan, which is good. Pretty much always. I mean, always, I think it's good to have a concrete plan that you can follow. Plans always change, but it's good to have something you can follow. And this forces you to do that. And then it forces you to have this conversation with your spouse or your boyfriend or girlfriend, because at this point, at least you can make sure you're on the same page. You're going to be having this discussion at some point. The further down the line it is, the worse it's going to be. And so have it sooner rather than later. And I know everyone's thinking, well, further down the line, I'll be making my millions. And so it doesn't matter. Yeah, have that conversation anyway, because even if you are making your millions, maybe your spouse wants to keep working. And that means your spouse is going to stay in the place he or she is in. For instance, for me, my wife hates not working, hates sitting at home doing nothing. She loves to work, but she likes to work for a company. She likes to work as part of a bigger thing where she gets to interact with other people all day and gets to go somewhere and do all that. And I get it. I mean, I don't really get it, because I don't like that. But I see where she's coming from. But yeah, that does put up certain constraints. And so you need to see what your situation is and be honest about it and then talk to your significant other. The other thing is you being the freelancer and the other person not being the freelancer, you're going to have to ask them to be more open minded. Because let's face it, you're kind of the anomaly. They're doing the normal thing. You get a job, you work for someone and that's it. You're doing something a bit different. So you kind of need to explain in a way why you do what you do. Maybe it is because you have a certain talent. You want to pursue it. Maybe it is your best opportunity. Maybe it is because you want to be location dependent and you can show them how that can work for them. And that's kind of what happened with me and my wife, because she worked for a company. She was working as a consultant and doing quite well as well. But it was really not good for her. I mean, it was not good for her health. She had to keep going to the doctor. She was having issues. She was working late night, she was getting stressed out. It really was affecting her health. And so I told her, I was like, well, quit. Because obviously that job, you have a job to earn money. You earn that money to have a better life. If you're already having a worse life for that job, then it kind of defeats the whole purpose. And so she did quit the job. At which point I was like, oh crap. Now I need to figure out some way to provide for her or something. But what happened was, A, we got to live all over the place and work all over the place as well. And B, her health got a lot better. And in fact, her doctor was amazed. I mean, he was surprised when she went for a follow-up checkup. And he's like, all the issues you had are kind of gone. He's like, let's keep it on this, but this is really good. And so yeah, and we both learned from it. So she works again now, but she was very careful to find a job that didn't have all the crap she had to deal with before. So anyway, find out what your situation is, be honest about it, and ask your significant other, your partner to be open-minded about it. Because you are in your situation for certain reasons. You're either forced there or you want to be in there. And honestly, a lot of people say, oh, it's so risky to be a freelancer. I find it a lot less risky, quite frankly, because if you can find a way to make money for yourself, you don't need to rely on another company to give you a job. You don't need to have that. You can just earn money in any situation, basically. Like as long as you have an internet connection for me. But anyway, have that conversation, be honest about it, be open about it. The earlier you have it, the better. And not everything has to fit in place, but at least you guys both know where you're coming from and where you'd like to head. And at least having that conversation is good. Even if there are no formal conclusions from it, have it. That's good. Okay. Second point is, I feel like I rambled on a bit. Well, the second point, okay, so these two things tie in a bit together. So what I started off with, with my wife, you know, back when it was my girlfriend as well, you know, she worked in an office and I worked on my own and she would ask me if I could run some errands for her, stuff like that, because I could make my own hours. And I kind of refused. And this was on purpose because I needed her to develop more of a mentality of taking my time seriously, my work time seriously. Even though I don't go into an office, I don't have a boss breathing down my neck. I take my work time seriously and I needed her to as well. The fact is every now and then I probably could have done some shopping, but I didn't on purpose because I wanted her to take the work time seriously. And so what I ended up doing was I was like, well, we'll go shopping together. First of all, it couldn't be an activity that we can do together. Second of all, the fact is we ended up going shopping on the weekend, which a thing I love about working for myself is I don't have to go shopping with a huge crowd on the weekend. But I would do it anyway just because I'm trying to show that point. So now we've obviously, now we've married, we've been together for a while. And so I will do some shopping sometimes. In fact, usually what ends up happening is if I'm coming back from a conference or a meeting or something on the way, you know, I'm happy to pick stuff up. And that's usually what ends up happening. Anyway, you can find your own sweet spot. But at the beginning, you kind of have to insist. As I mentioned many times before, you have to take your work seriously. No one else will take it as seriously as you do. So you may have to make sure you take it seriously. And a lot of that will have to be setting up boundaries. And so if your partner wants you to run to Ikea to do this or to do this, you know, run these errands or whatever it is every now and then. In fact, I think at the beginning, most of all the time, you're going to have to put your foot down. But this also means, by the way, when your partner comes back from work, you shouldn't be there hanging out with friends, drinking beer, stuff like that. I mean, you've been working or at least during your work hours, you're actually working. And I actually work through my work hours and I'm very, I've spent a lot of my time trying to figure out how to be more productive. And so that's not a problem for me. But you do need to take it seriously and show your partner that you're taking it seriously. And so along those lines, you also need to be able to turn it off. Your spouse, if they're working in an office, when they come home, they want to relax. They want to, you know, have a compari, as my sister mentioned growing up, we would, I mean, not when we were young, but yeah, you know, we have compari o'clock. And so at a certain point we have our compari and then or your wine or beer, whatever it is, and then you, and then, and then you relax. And so especially people working in an office, when they get home, they don't want to think about office stuff. And they want to relax. And so once my wife comes home for dinner, that's what I try to do. I shut off my work stuff. And we talk about our day, we talk about stuff we want to do and stuff like that. But I'm not dealing with any work. And obviously meal times and meal times in general, I'm pretty insistent that we both sit down and we have a meal as a couple. And we're not just eating at our desk or anything like that. You know, when we're both having meals in the same place, which it's usually dinner and breakfast. And so it's important to be able, because as a freelancer, many times you're always on call. And you like, so I like what I do. And I like the fact that I can reply to this as soon as I think of replying to that or, you know, deal with that. But A, I'm, well, I'm trying to partition it and trying to give each task its own time. A, because it's better for me in terms of productivity, but B, because I do try to shut off when my wife comes around. But likewise, she understands also on the weekends every now and then, or if I have a big assignment or something like that, I will be working. And look every now and then she has to work overtime as well. And that's, and so it works out for both of us. But you do need to be able to turn it off and give your partner the time he or she wants to just be a couple and, and to do things on your own without having to worry about work. Look, a lot of people who work in offices have the same problem. They can't shut off as well. But I think for us freelancers and people who work for yourselves, entrepreneurs, stuff like that, it can be especially hard to do that. And so I, for your spouse's sake and for their benefit, I think you should find a way to do that just so you can spend time together. These were a couple of things that came to my mind and that I realized it was, were things that I had to deal with with my wife and that I think are quite important. Once again, they especially apply if you are a freelancer, entrepreneur, work for yourself, and your spouse's significant other boyfriend, girlfriend does not, because then you're both living sort of different worlds. And so you kind of need to find a way to bring them together. And that's about it. I hope you found this useful. If you did, please don't forget to give a thumbs up. So I know what you guys find useful. And don't forget to subscribe if you haven't. And I'll see you in the next video. Thanks. Bye.